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The Norquist Rebellion

It seems like every day brings a fresh reminder of how polarized and paralyzed Washington has become. On Thursday, the Senate took up Mr. Obama’s proposal to spend $60 billion on repairs to roads, bridges, airports – the things that get lumped under the poetic-sounding “instrastructure.” Not a single Republican voted to break their party’s filibuster of this bill, despite the fact that many, if not all of them, have supported such spending before.

So how to explain the filibuster? Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, accused Democrats of designing the bill to fail. In other words, they played the dastardly trick of asking Republicans to vote for job-creating spending, and to pay for it with a small charge to about 345,000 taxpayers. The nerve!

In this atmosphere, it was hard to know what to make of a letter that came out Wednesday, signed by 40 Republicans and 60 Democrats urging the supercommittee on deficit reduction to cut $4 trillion through spending reductions and revenue increases.

That is a good sign, although, of course, it’s one thing to sign a letter, and another thing to actually cast a tough vote. David Firestone, who writes about politics and Congress for the editorial page, offered some thoughts on this development:

There are a lot of ways the 40 Republicans could wriggle out of this request without endorsing higher taxes. The letter did not refer to “tax revenues,” just revenues, which in theory could come from increasing Medicare premiums or other methods. (More likely, the Republicans probably have in mind eliminating some tax breaks and loopholes.)

And last week, as a Tuesday editorial noted, Republicans on the supercommittee claimed they could bring in $200 billion in new revenues by lowering taxes, because of increased economic growth. That tired canard was discredited decades ago in the days of voodoo economics, and in any case would never pass muster with the nonpartisan Congressional scorekeepers of the deficit.

But the letter was still significant, because Republicans who signed it directly defied the autocratic demands of Grover Norquist, the anti-tax vigilante who coerced Republicans into sign a no-taxes pledge and now threatens to ostracize them if they violate it. Among other requirements, the pledge forbids the use of any new revenues to lower the deficit. In other words, if a tax break is removed, it has to be offset dollar for dollar by spending cuts.

Mr. Norquist’s pledge has been a huge obstacle to honest dialogue in Washington, and beyond that to real deficit reduction. If 40 House Republicans are willing to actually vote for a sensible, balanced approach to cutting the deficit, and not just co-sign a letter about it, that would be a marvelous thing, indeed. But for some reason I think the recent filibuster is a better indication of things to come.